One “attraction” that has been on my bucket list since we set out on our journey over four years ago has been Antelope Canyon in AZ. The pictures I’ve seen from this canyon have been amazing, and we’ve wanted to experience it for ourselves. The closest town to Antelope Canyon is Page, AZ, and I reserved five nights at Wahweap RV and Campground on Lake Powell. It is a short, 140-mile ride from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and we had a beautiful day for the drive. Of course, our GPS Samantha was screaming at us because we took Highway 64 out to Highway 89, rather than driving back down to I40 which would have added an hour and a half to the drive. We had driven 64 along the rim to the Desert Watchtower and saw that it would be fine for towing the trailer, so we ignored Samantha :-). If anyone happens to be traveling towards Page on Hwy. 89, it is now re-opened after the landslide that took out part of it last year. No need to take the bypass any longer.
Wahweap RV and Campground is in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, right on the shores of Lake Powell. There are 90 full hookup sites, 112 dry camping sites, and 6 group camping sites. Run by the concessionaire Aramark, the campground is nicely laid out, paved roads and sites, and very clean restrooms, showers and laundry facilities. We were in loop D, which was hardly even half full while we were there, and we never had any other campers directly next to us. We did like this campground, it was quiet and clean, and would recommend a stay here. We did feel like we jumped straight from the ice box to the frying pan however; it was sunny and HOT during our stay here!
Early in April I had booked a tour of Lower Antelope Canyon with Ken’s Tours. The canyons are on Navajo Nation lands, and you must go through the canyon with a guide. There are two different canyons, Upper Antelope and Lower Antelope, run by different companies. In my research, I had read that the Lower is usually less crowded, as you must enter the canyon on a series of steep ladders, where you are able to walk in to the Upper Antelope Canyon. Ken’s Tours also had very high ratings on TripAdvisor, so I decided to take that one. I had also read that the best pictures come mid to late morning due to the position of the sun, so we took the 10:00AM tour. They take groups out every twenty minutes. Once we arrived to check in, we could see it really wasn’t necessary to have a reservation, almost everyone else there were walk-ins. Maybe it would be busier as the summer season progresses.
Checking in, we paid our fee of $28.00/each ($20.00 for the tour, $8.00 Navajo Park fee)and headed off. Side note: If you check out the Ken’s Tour website, you’ll notice there are two different types of tours: general and photographers. We are on the general tour. I would have loved to have gone on the longer, smaller photographers tour, but they are very strict about who goes on it and that the proper equipment is used, ie, SLR or DSLR camera. Being that ours is DOA at Nikon, we were not able to take that tour. I do have an spare Nikon D50 body, but I have been mostly using my Nikon Coolpix on this spring trip. Since we didn’t both have a DSLR, I didn’t want to take separate tours. For these pictures, I used the D50 camera with a Nikon 12-24mm wide-angle lens. One of our guides, Larissa, was also extremely helpful in recommending the proper settings and pointing out special areas for pictures.
